The Way Of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry – Blog Tour Review.

About The Book

Edinburgh, 1847. City of Medicine, Money, Murder.

In the city’s Old Town a number of young women have been found dead, all having suffered similarly gruesome ends. Across the city in the New Town, medical student Will Raven is about to start his apprenticeship with the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson.

Simpson’s patients range from the richest to the poorest of this divided city. His house is like no other, full of visiting luminaries and daring experiments in the new medical frontier of anaesthesia. It is here that Raven meets housemaid Sarah Fisher, who recognises trouble when she sees it and takes an immediate dislike to him. She has all of Raven’s intelligence but none of his privileges, in particular his medical education.

With each having their own motive to look deeper into the city’s spate of suspicious deaths, Raven and Sarah find themselves propelled headlong into the darkest shadows of Edinburgh’s underworld, where they will have to overcome their differences if they are to make it out alive.

My Review

The Way Of All Flesh was a book that I was lucky enough to receive a signed copy of at last years Theakston’s Crime Festival, so I was pleased to be asked to join the blog tour.

Edinburgh and its history is something I know little about and I was unaware when I started this novel that many of the characters in the book were real people. I googled often, looking at the history of various establishments and the people involved who were responsible for improving medical practices.

The two main characters, Raven and Sarah were very likeable. It was evident that Raven wasn’t as he seemed but I didn’t feel that he was a malicious person. His secrets were down to other reasons which were revealed steadily throughout the novel. I thought Sarah was wonderful. Clever, brave and outspoken enough to get into trouble for it. I had a lot of sympathy for her, not being able to do something she would excel at because she was female. I found myself muttering at times at the attitudes by some towards her just because she wasn’t male, one more than any other was the assistant in the chemists.

It is quite medical but not understanding all of it didn’t stop me enjoying this book a lot. I was pleased to see that there will be another book in the series.

I love medical books and I went to Edinburgh uni and did human dissection in a wonderful old building there that had so much history behind it that I’ve always been fascinated by this period in Scottish history x